It's a song to be appreciated by its musical values. From a songwriting point of view, it's very simplistic and repetitive, but you get something from it if you take care of its instrumental variations.

nimrod

It's a song to be appreciated by its musical values. From a songwriting point of view, it's very simplistic and repetitive, but you get something from it if you take care of its instrumental variations.

Thats good Hombre, of course melodically its not up there with Hey Jude or Something and lyrically its incredibly simplistic from the man who wrote Strawberry Fields & Walrus. But its interesting in other ways as you say Hombre, there are lots of quirky things going on in what is essentially a 'Blues' well really its only half a blues as the intro, refrain & outro are not a blues, so really only the verses are blues but even they are altered from the standard blues format, also I absolutely like the outro with its wall of guitars,(god knows how many overdubs) and the tension that the thing builds up, thats the thing I like the most is the tension building. The guitar 'tone' I like very much as well, no tinny Fenders here King Crimson & Radiohead have both 'borrowed' from this sound.Id have done it differently though instead of cutting it off Id have increased the volume and then slowly decreased it to a fade like A Day In The LIfe final chord

Dave, that was done with an audio editor, probably Audacity. If played too loud, you might hear some other instruments bleeding through.

I see. I was going to listen to the Cirque version and see if the added guitar work matched the bleed through to see if it might have been part of the original mix. As I understand it, John and George went into one of the other studios and did quite a few overdubs to get the massive sound on the fade out.

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Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or imbeciles who really mean it! Mark Twain

Thats good Hombre, of course melodically its not up there with Hey Jude or Something and lyrically its incredibly simplistic from the man who wrote Strawberry Fields & Walrus.

Surely John thought how this song was going to be recorded even before writing its few words. Actually John was at a quite simplistic stage at this point, just think about his other two important contributions to Abbey Road: "Come Together" is clever word-play with great backing instrumental, but the sung melody is also repetitive with few variations; and the lyrics from "Because" are as simple as effective and beautiful. I believe John had a minimalistic mind at that point, that lasted at least until his under-produced Plastic Ono Band.

Id have done it differently though instead of cutting it off Id have increased the volume and then slowly decreased it to a fade like A Day In The LIfe final chord

I agree, never quite liked that abrupt ending. And the B-side ends with "Her Majesty" instead of the perfect "The End"... Thus, I think one of the few weak points of this fantastic album is how both sides are ended. But our Beatles were transgressors of the norms, weren't they?

Used to hate it for a long time, until I once sat down and truly listened to it. It's a mesmerizing song, full of emotion and as intense as anything on Plastic Ono Band. The way I see it, it's a song that captures the very essence of having an obsession, for better or for worse (and John should know as he was in the midst of two ones at the time - Yoko and heroin).